Lipton Matthews – The Daily Sceptic Aug 1, 2026The history of the transatlantic slave trade refuses to settle into a single, agreed-upon narrative. Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean networks in human beings had moved people for centuries before a single European ship appeared off the coast. European cloth alone accounted for 46% of the total value of everything paid to African chiefs across the entire period studied, a figure that reflects not European imposition but African demand dictating the assortment. Even the physical infrastructure of the trade underscores African primacy rather than European domination. But there is far less room for doubt about the other side of the Atlantic: African elites did not simply survive the slave trade.